Looking back at what we’re doing with Key Words, notice we’re immersing the young child in the printed word — showing them that words are “talk written down.” And for some, that’s the first time they will realize what print is for. For them, that’s like “unlocking the secret of print.” And with that discovery, they want to do it themselves. 

With this strategy, they’ll learn to read and write with the same pleasure and ease they learned to speak. For what we’re doing is much like the basic strategy adults appear to be programmed to use to help a child learn to speak.

That is, as I describe in detail here, we model by emphasizing words related to something of interest to the child. The child absorbs, and hidden from our view and guided by their own innate capabilities, the child copies what we’ve said. We wait patiently, then respond with pleasure when — perhaps a few days or even many weeks later — they say the word(s) we modeled. 

Here with writing/reading, we model, then wait patiently, too, and let the child set the pace, knowing we’ll only interfere with their innate process, if we pressure them.

So the only real difference with print is that we’re guiding them more overtly, helping them in a more structured way to build the skills they need.  And we do all this this with the combination of Key Words and The Steps.